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Now, let me tell you right now that I’m gonna teach you how to make this. But you will first have to trust me and leave all your little measuring cups in your filthy little drawers (if you’re anything like me) and get ready to eyeball things and taste taste taste.

Basically, I found a wonderful little recipe for lemon-garlic roasted chicken from Ina Garten, but hers called for a whole chicken. And I dunno if you’ve heard (it’s allll over the newsstands next to the ashton/demi headlines) but I’m on a low-carb kick again so if I need to toss potatoes, bread, and pasta out of my life, you can bet I’m gonna eat the shit out of some dark meat.

So I decided to just take her recipe and experiment, which is why I can’t give you many exact measurements, except for the cheat-worthy gravy and sweet green beans.

THIS IS IMPORTANT: Please read this entire thing before you sit down to make this. I am by no means a recipe-writer. And I find it painful to even put these things together. For instance I’m and idiot and will tell you to fully bake your chicken, thennn say to make the gravy and green beans, but obviously it is smarter to do this as it all bakes. I hope this isn’t too hard to understand….

For just the chicken, you will need:

4 bone-in chicken thighs and 4 legs/drumsticks…with skin, preferably.

Fresh thyme. Lots of it. I’d say…ummm…10 sprigs or so.

olive oil

5 tablespoons of unsalted butter

3 lemons

mushrooms (not a must)

8 peeled cloves of garlic (although I used 10 because I love garlic)

paprika

your favorite poultry seasoning (duh, lawry’s)

kosher salt and fresh ground pepper

one yellow onion

some baby carrots (some. see how precise I am?)

BACON. your favorite bacon. I used uncured apple smoked.

2 cups of chicken stock

For the gravy you will need:

2 cups of chicken stock

3 tablespoons of cornstarch

1 teaspoon poultry seasoning (lawry’s!)

For the green beans you will need:

1 pound green beans, washed, tips snapped

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

A little salt

1/4 cup water stirred with 1/4 teaspoon sugar

Salt & pepper

Ok readdddddy? As I said, I’m not a recipe writer, but I really did just literally throw this together so I don’t want anyone to be nervous that there are no measurements. Chicken thighs and drums are so easy to work with and very difficult to over-season or over-cook. For me, they are really fun to work with because they are soooo juicy and crowd pleasing. People really love having a down-home, hot, roasted chicken meal. It’s just so…cozy.

*The first thing I did was sautee 5 pieces of bacon in a non-stick pan with a teaspoon of olive oil. Why? Because I was hungry and wanted bacon, truthfully. So I made bacon, and poured ALL the extra grease into a bowl to save for this chicken recipe….smartest thing I’ve ever done.

*With your oven pre-heated to 400 degrees, start by washing all your thighs and drums (the chicken ones, not yours, unless yours are noticeably dirty). Pat dry and lay into a roasting pan.

*Quarter 2 of the lemons so you have 8 wedges total. Toss em in the roasting pan.

*Mince (or use a garlic press, preferably) all 8-10 cloves of the garlic into a bowl. Rub some of the chunky paste deliciousness on the tops of each piece of chicken.

*Generously sprinkle the thyme leaves over the chicken — if you flip each sprig over, the leaves kind of effortlessly pull off the stem.

*Take each tablespoon of butter (5 total) and spread the chunks randomly throughout the pan.

I realize now I should have taken more photos, but hopefully at this point, yours will look like this:

See? I was SUPER heavy with the garlic. I highly recommend this. Next…

*Add 2 cups of chicken stock to the roasting pan, avoiding the tops of each piece of chicken. Want that flavor to stick for a bit!

*Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Also with a bitttt of a heavy hand — much of the seasoning will fall off into the yummy broth at the bottom.

*Pour the bacon grease over each piece of chicken. RUSTICALLY ( 🙂 )

* Quarter your onion and the mushrooms. Toss in the pan with your baby carrots.

*Lay 4 more strips of bacon on top of the chicken.

By now, it should look like this:

Are you nervous? I know people (me) get really annoyed when a recipe doesn’t have EXACT measurements but pleassssse trust me. It is SO hard to mess this up. Also, if you noticed, yes….I do have an extra entire BULB of garlic in the middle there, chopped in half. No idea if it contributed to the overall flavor so I don’t want to ask you to do this as well. I just figured it couldn’t hurt.

Next..

*Drizzle with olive oil alllll over

*Squeeze another half a lemon over the chicken, reserving the other half for serving time 🙂

Put into the oven at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, then baste or spoon the liquid all over each piece. Turn the oven down to 350 degrees and cook for another 30-45 minutes. Keep basting throughout.

Whenever I roast chicken, it takes much longer than the written time because I open the oven so much to baste. This particular one took about an hour and 40 minutes to bake completely.

When your chicken looks like it should be about done inside (I always cut into the ugliest piece to make sure), sprinkle the entire pan with more poultry seasoning, and some paprika. The paprika takes the chicken from looking raw/bland (even though it isn’t) and gives it a wonderfully roasted coloring. Now broil the chicken for 5-10 minutes, watching constantly, as the broiler is just meant to give it a nice brown top.

Gravy time!

For the chicken gravy, I used the recipe here, and my poultry seasoning was lawry’s. It says to use just chicken broth but I used both 2 cups of chicken broth added to a few tablespoons of the chicken drippings from my roasting pan:

Holy crap that looks bomb. Thought I’d share my favorite way to cook green beans. Stupidly easy, just wash and do the tips of the green beans, cover a pan with foil, pile the green beans on the pan. Pour olive oil over and salt and pepper that shit. Mix it all up, and roast them at 425 (I think) turning over once, until they have that nice brown roasting marking on them. I like to squirt lemon on top when serving. So easy and pretty much the only way I eat green beans.

mmm roasted green beans! that sounds good too. truthfully, i wasn’t even a huge fan of green beans until the sugared one I posted. I am so used to having them with butter so the sweet ones were such a good change. will try yours! thank you!

Holy Christ I’m on a train going to c.t from the city to visit family and I swear I just got hot and bothered by that recipe. I’m starving now and all I want is that. Will be making this very very soon…thanks for the recipe.

I am working rom home this afternoon. Just looked in my freezer and took out 5lbs of chicken thighs and drum sticks. I was going to make Apricot chicken, but then I opened my email to this recipe. I will definitely make this tonight! YUMMY….. bacon.. butter…. dark meat…

This looks wonderful!! I actually appreciate your style of recipe writing because it sounds exactly like how I would need to hear it in my head to understand what on earth I’m supposed to be doing. This is going in my big binder of recipes to try! Looks VERY husband-friendly what with the emphasis on meat/bacon/gravy, yet STILL incorporates a veggie 🙂

And I’m loving the “rustic” thing! Why go out for some trendy “rustically prepared” foods when you know you can slap that together yourself just the same?

Good lord, your blog is the best. I like baking for its precision and I like cooking because it’s not–and your recipe is the perfect example. I was all prepared to make steak and then I saw this and ran to the grocery store to get the chicken. Also, I forgot to thaw my steak this morning. It was perfect except that I don’t eat bread either, and all I could think about was how great it have been to sop up all that liquified fat with a baguette.

Thanks for presenting an Ina dish, minus the judgment for not using Hamptons tomatoes or “good mayonnaise.”

For heavens sake get a publisher and do a book, we have a large number of annoying non entities who require one to have the contents of a small store to cook anything whereas you have good sound practical stuff including cheating and cook it until it looks right (my mothers favourite saying ‘how much do you add mum? Until it looks right’). Now if you would stop this foolish no carbs thing and get back to ckae type stuff would be perfect. remember skinny people dont bounce well if they fall over, padding is a safety feature.

You. Are. Awesome.
Seriously, you make cooking look easy and more importantly, fun! You are a example of someone who is successful yet also likes cooking for her man! I totally suck at cooking and get really disapointed when I try making something and it comes out horrible. My boyfriend is supportive and will eat it and tell me its good (poor thing) and encourages me to keep trying. This sounds easy enough, I will give it a try!
Thank youuuuuuu!!!!

Thank you SO much for your blog. I was such a terrible cook and really nervous in the kitchen and your blog gave me the confidence to try. I like the pictures throughout the process and the instructions are easy to follow and not too precise. THANK YOU!
Please tell John that Stay With Me was my wedding song and thank him for his music. What a team you are!

You need a better camera. Are you using a DSLR? Check out PioneerWoman.com. She gives easy lessons for good food photography. Your food looks delicious, but you could capture it better. This isn’t meant to be offensive. Just a suggestion. Invest in a good camera.

I saw this recipe last night. First thing I did was check the freezer to see how much chicken we had. I plan on doubling it so my kids can take it for lunch on Monday. The only thing I plan on doing different is brining the chicken first. I’m glad that as a foodie I stumbled upon your blog a month or so ago. Thanks to you I already have done the chipotle recipe a few times.

Love this recipe!!! I’m going to make it very soon for my pork loving boyfriend. keep the ideas coming. I make almost everything you post here. The adobo sauce is great in mayo too.
Btw–Who makes the wood coffee table? Thanks in advance.

Used your recipe last night. Chicken was flavorful. Would recommend using pan juices (yielded 1.5 cups) instead of broth / cornstarch. Take jus out of the pan about half hour before finish, skim fat and reduce it by half. Thicken with a bacon roux. Deglaze the pan after you brown chicken, pressing lemons and other solids. Delushious!

All I gotta say is MMMmmmmm 😉 I just tried this recipe with a full chicken breast, bone in, skin on. I put it all in my large cast iron skillet and it was to DIE for!!! I not only put thyme all over everything but I made a bed of thyme and sliced lemon and garlic for the chicken to rest on. I didn’t use mushrooms but instead used the Cheddar Cauliflower I just got in from our local CSA. I only had to cook for the 30 mins at 400 then 35mins at 350 and broiled for about 3-5mins. I also didn’t have any green beans and used sauteed Tatsoi with the roasted chicken juice yumminess and wow what a combo! It was sooooo easy just put it all together and pop it in the oven! I only basted 3 times total and chicken was extremely moist! Oh and the best part was the roasted lemons I squeezed on top of the chicken, cauliflower and bacon!!!!! I’m completely stuffed writing this comment, however still dreaming over having MORE!
Thanks for the idea!
Abby

Wow! I stumbled across this blog and I am so happy that I did. I love the way you write the recipes very easy to remember, the pictures also help. And you make it all sound easy. Love it. This is what I am making for dinner tonight for sure.

This was unreal! Made it for the first time today and while I might have been a little heavy handed with the lemon, the flavour of the chicken was so good. The green beans were also delicious. The carmalized pieces of garlic were my favourite part. I swear I could’ve eaten a bowl of them. Chrissy, you’re a genious! Now on to the chipotle marinade…

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